OUR STORY

In this episode from our archives, Irish songcarrier Sionnáin offers an ode to the Cailleach called “The Wise One” - a deep, powerful conversation about ancient tradition and living lore.

OUR GUEST

Sionnáin is a song carrier, ceremonialist and guide from the West of Ireland. She walks a path devoted to tending the threads of lineage, landscape and language. Through her living relationship with song, ceremony and kinship, she is remembering and returning to her native language.

For the last three years she has been deeply connected with the Caoineadh (Keening) tradition of Ireland. She has been listening to how parts of this ancient practice are calling to be woven into our culture as a rite of passage for these times.

Sionnáin loves to create spaces where the waters of wisdom in your own body can flow forth with ease. These are spaces for healing, remembrance and resonance, held in the Dreamtime. Here your prayers and your heart’s deepest longings can be felt, held and nourished through the songlines of these isles.

Her work is supported by her studies in Quantum Coherence Therapy, Yoga Nidra, Yin Yoga, and Voice and Sound. Together with her rich life journey, kinships and initiations, these give shape and depth to the spaces of care, community and connection she shares.

Find Sionnáin on IG at shannonsoulsounds

Find all the links to her current work.

OUR CONVERSATION

• The song, “The Wise One,” was born beside the fire at the Paps of Anu in County Kerry.
• The Cailleach is the wise old woman, the sacred hag, grandmother essence, and according to some traditions in Éire and Alba (Scotland), the goddess who created the land itself. Cailleach is rooted in contrast - she is strong and fierce, but also soft and nurturing.
• Caoineadh - the ancient Irish lament tradition (Anglicized as “keen”). The mná chaointe, keening women who would perform the ritual of grief at the wake. For more: visit Mary McLaughlin, a scholar and keeper of the wisdom of the tradition.
• The legacy of grief related to An tOcras Mór or An Gorta Mor, the famine or the Great Hunger.
• The conscious choice to open and receive the ancestors, the songs, the magic
• Tuam: the Galway town and site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home from 1925-1961, where the remains of 796 babies were found in a disused septic tank.
• Ireland’s Samhain community traditions that were about sharing and visiting, rather than the commercialized version we have today.

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Music by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com